Growing Technology, Increasing Connectivity:

TIME magazine (loved by some, loathed by others) recently named its "Person of the Year" as - you. That's correct, YOU. On the cover of their current issue rests a flat-screened monitor and "not-unlike-a-Mac" keyboard, with the monitor's screen a shiny coat of reflective material; if one picks up the mag and stares into it, one should see his or her reflection in it, thus fulfilling the "Person of the Year" nomination.

Before your ego swells to global proportions, or we poke fun at this obvious tongue-in-cheek gag, consider the tagline also on the cover: "You are in charge of the Information Age." Each of us have become the "Person of the Year" because we are all currently living in the exploding, ever increasing "Information Age", with almost anything we want to read or know within a "Google" search. This has me thinking - where will it lead?

Peter Russell has wrote a book a few years ago (of which I've yet to read, I say with much chagrin) entitled "The Global Brain Awakens". This book discusses the phenomenon of global connectivity, where our world, due to the advent and increasing technology of the World Wide Web, cell technology, and increasingly more powerful and smaller personal computers and data pads, becomes "connected" like one giant brain, with us as individuals (and our handy-dandy pocket pc's, etc.) acting like connected neurons. Considering the current breadth of gadgets on the market today, such as MP3 players, PDA's, laptops, cameras, cell phones, tablet PC's, and their ability to have or use Web connectivity, this makes sense - we can now communicate with ease, audibly and visually, with anyone on the other side of the planet who has a similar technological connection. And event that transpires in your local town, say of someone winning the lottery, or a tragedy where a small child becomes wedged in a well, can now become common knowledge in India, Thailand, or New Zealand.

Where will this all lead? The boundaries of nations, and the doors of privacy, are disappearing almost overnight. Not just in a business sense, but also with the rise and popularity of web blogs (such as this one), live camera feeds, and constant uploading, people from around the globe are morphing our world from one of distant and seperate nations and cultures to one large, open arena of awareness. I'm not implying that this will erase local customs or cultures, but what it will do is, for better or worse, increase peoples awareness of anything and everything happening around the globe. If I want to read the news about happenings in New Delhi, I can.

On the positive side, this can help out individuals, as well as nations, by bringing into the limelight such tragedies as genocide, occuring right now in Darfur, Sudan. With this kind of situation, the connectiviy of the Information Age is a perfect vehicle to grab people's and government's attention for extremely important situations such as Darfur, and organize worldwide aid and support to educate about the situation, and to bring support to end such a travesty. On the negative side, however, we are being forced to adjust to a different world altogether, whether we want to or not. The concept of "Big Brother" aside, we are now living in a world where ANYTHING we do could end up on the web, and in people's consciousness, and puplic discourse. Regardless of the fact that we aren't celebrities, we have the potential to become one overnight, and not always in a postive fashion. Consider the boy who was simply recording himself in his garage in front of a rented video camera, acting out a part of a "Star Wars", using a golf club as a home-made lightsaber. His embarrassing antics ended up on the web, where he was accosted with unending ridicule. Fortunatley, this story ended happily, landing him a spot on "The Tonight Show" w/Jay Leno - but couldn't it also have turned quite sour, ending instead with massive psychological damage, or even suicide? This was a few years ago, too - with today's cell phones and other electronic device's ability to take photos and video, and with site like "You Tube" or "My Space" allowing anyone to post content to the web, the next time you act like a drunken idiot and pull your pants down, you just might find yourself a hit on the Internet.

One question remains - with technology ever increasing, and becoming available to more and more people due to falling prices and faster hardware, will this new world of a "global connected brain" fuel our creativity and increase cultural awareness, and aid us in solving crisis, finding others, and building upon our learned mistakes for a better future, or will it have instead an unforseen negative effect, curtailing any risk-taking due to fear of ridicule and mockery, and send us sprinting away from any sort of artistic expression, or even simply BBQ-ing with the neighbors, for fear of a public eye gazing down upon our existence?